


So Swiftly The Madness Came

by poisontaster



Series: Heart 'Verse [27]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Consensual Underage Sex, Emotional Hurt, Established Relationship, F/M, Fear of Discovery, M/M, Secret Relationship, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-16
Updated: 2006-07-16
Packaged: 2018-05-17 01:13:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5848108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma messed everything up, Dean's messed up, Sam's a mess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Swiftly The Madness Came

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to exsequar and mona1347 for beta services and helping me make sense of it all. Oh! And there's a song. A horridly emo song that they would be deeply shamed to have on the show, but that influenced this story and haunted my head greatly: I Need You to Love Me by BarlowGirl. (Though the title is [a misquote] from Neko Case's Dirty Knife)

_Previously._

_Dean looks over his shoulder when he feels someone coming up behind him; relaxes when he sees it's just Sam. "Hey," he says, feeling the grin break out on his face._

_"Hey," Sam answers. He comes to stand just behind Dean in the doorway, closer than they normally stand in public—not that Dean's necessarily complaining. Sam's just gotten out of the shower; his hair's still wet and curling up at the ends and he smells like his girly shower gel. Him and his damn 'dry skin'. "What's going on?"_

_Dean nods towards the knot of kids in the practice room. "Sparring. S'too wet to get good traction outdoors." He watches them—the kids—step and move against each other. It reminds him of when it was him and Sam under Dad's watchful and critical eye. "Look at 'em, man," he whispers to Sam, tilting his head back a little. "Hari's going to go through those monsters like goddamned greased lightning." He looks at the twins, Deacon and Emma, like silent deadly ghosts, working in the kind of tandem it took him and Sam _years_ to find. "And Emma and Deacon… Man." He shakes his head and lifts his water bottle to his mouth._

_Sam stirs, leaning in a little closer so that the puff of his breath drifts past Dean's ear and gives him goose bumps on the back of his neck. "Emma and Deacon," Sam murmurs softly, "are fucking."_

_There might have been something else he said, but Dean can't hear it over his own sputter and choke as the water goes down the wrong way._  


* * *

_Now._

Dean just walks out.

Just…turns around and walks the fuck out; out of the practice room, right on out the front door. From across the floor, Sam gives Emma an enigmatic look (that's really not all that enigmatic) and then follows Dean. By that time, it's too late; her concentration's been split too long. Hari flips her in a neat circle and puts her down on the mat like a sack of flour. Emma groans.

" _That's_ for last Tuesday, bitch." Hari bares her teeth at Emma then extends a hand to help her up. Emma waves her off and sits up slowly. Deacon's standing on the sidelines waiting his turn—the room's not big enough for all of them to spar at once—and looking at her. His expression says it all: _what did you do now, Emma?_

She hunches her shoulder, rolls over and slithers to her feet, her back to him so she can pretend not to see. She wishes she had an answer.

It had seemed so clear once.

***

Girls are easy. Deacon can just slip into her bed, slide a hand across the smooth curve of her belly and hook his fingers between her thighs to stroke and circle until she goes blind, coming in soundless gasps Soundless because they can't afford to get caught like this: brother and sister. Twins.

They'd always been close. Maybe too close, but don't people expect that from twins? Anyway, it hadn't been like this before. Before they were the only things left. Now Emma clamps her thighs over his hand even after the orgasm is over, letting him play in the wetness inside her, on her thighs, unwilling to let him go.

But with boys it's harder—no pun intended. Or maybe it is. It's so much more violent with boys, the push-pull, slick-slide. Harder to disguise under blankets at night. Harder to be quiet. Harder to clean. And the smell.

Emma loves Deacon's smell; loves to have it hot and clinging across her fingers, rolling across her tongue, loves to open her thighs and smell the two of them mingled together _there_ , even overlaid with the faintly acidic smell of the rubber and spermicide. But in a relatively crowded dorm at night? Not so cool. Even if you're _not_ brother and sister.

Sometimes he can come just from her thumb, circling and stroking, tracing him over and over while his lips make the shape of her name against her collar bone in breathless silence. Sometimes he just gets up and goes to the bathroom to finish himself off and though she feels bad and sad and guilty, she stays where she is, shoving her face into the vacated linen and breathing deep. They have to be careful. They have to be smart.

Smart as Sam and Dean

***

Dean's sitting on the porch, on the wet and muddy steps, staring out into the overcast day.

Sam hesitates a second—mostly at the thought of the mess it's going to make of his jeans—before he sits down next to Dean the way they have a thousand times before, welded at calf and thigh and shoulder.

But then Dean gives a slight twitch, drawing in on himself and there's suddenly this space between them. "How… Did you see them? Or…?"

"Emma told me." Sam feels guilty now for being so flip with Dean, for acting like this was yet another prank in their ongoing and never ending war. He puts his hand on Dean's shoulder. "Dean— There's…there's more."

Dean makes a noise like a dog's bark. "More?" he asks. "Jesus, Sam. Like…worse?" His eyebrows cant up sharply and the ghost pupil of his milky eye shifts in Sam's direction.

"I…" Reflex makes him glance back towards the house, lower his voice to nearly subvocal. "She knows. She's been…checking us out."

Dean's hands clench, and to both their surprise, Dean's cane cracks loudly, a scar of yellow, raw wood arcing through the black lacquer. Dean flinches and the cane clatters down the stairs in a brittle clash. He's going to pay for that later, Sam thinks. "I'll kill her," Dean says.

Sam knows better than to think Dean's kidding and he tightens his fingers on Dean's shoulder, ignoring the way it aches in old breaks in his bones. "It's not… You don't understand."

"I don't understand?" Dean screeches, if one can screech in a rumbling undertone. "What the _fuck_ is there to understand? That… We give them a place to live, we show them how to _survive_ and she just…" Dean's voice gets more ragged, hoarser. "It's our past, Sam. Nobody else's. Ours. And I'm fucked if I'm going to let some fifteen year old twit take it away from us to… Shit, why? Did she even tell you that in her little confession hour? Why would she even…"

"Because she's fucking Deacon," Sam says reasonably. Reasonable is the only tack he can take when Dean's like this—hurt and wanting to strike out at random. Better Dean strikes out at him than Emma who—for all her smarts— _is_ only a fifteen year old girl. "She wants to know… She wants to know how we did it."

"Did what?"

Sam spreads his arms. "This. How we got here. Two gay dudes in a house."

Dean scoffs but Sam feels the heat of his anger shift a little bit. Of course, that just brings the throb of hurt more to the fore. "By lying every fucking day of our life," he says in a tone that could flay. "How 'bout starting there?"

"Hey." Sam's hand curves around the back of Dean's neck and he tugs Dean into him. Dean is resistant, but not seriously, grumbling as he tucks into Sam's side. Dean hasn't _really_ gotten much better at blatant touchy-feely over the years; Sam gets to lean his temple against Dean's for exactly thirty seconds before Dean's shouldering away from him again.

"Fuck," Dean says, without heat and Sam knows it's almost over.

***

Sometimes, he'll slip his cock in her from behind and they'll lay spooned like that, unmoving, her muscles tightening around him again and again in slow clenching waves and Deac hot and damp-breathing against the back of her neck, softly thumbing her nipples. She can feel when he comes inside her, even through the condom, and his fingers leave bruises on her arms.

Sometimes it's the mornings, when they go on their runs. Emma bought a sleeping bag with a busted zipper at Goodwill and hid it up in the hills, in the back of an overhang. They'll run for an hour, pushing hard, until they're panting and gasping and sodden through with fog and sweat and then she'll shove him against a tree and go to her knees, finally—finally—able to have the taste and weight of him in her mouth, hard and bitter-sweet.

He doesn't like to come in her mouth, really, so he'll shove her down or pick her up and he'll fuck her hard and fast and frantic or sometimes—rarely—so slow and syrupy sweet that she wants to scream and claw and bite because it always makes her cry and she fucking _hates_ that. But he won't let her do any of that, holding her wrists and kissing the side of her mouth and her neck and her shoulders until she dissolves into shivers and sobs like she's breaking apart on him.

"I love you," he always says when he comes, violent or sweet. "God, Emma…I love you so much."

But she never says it back.

***

"Should we go after them, you think?" Laurie looks over at Marcus, shifting nervously from foot to foot.

"I don't think that's a smart idea," Emma says, going to one knee to fiddle with her shoelace. There's nothing wrong with it, but she unknots it and starts to retie it again. It busies her hands, gives her a few more minutes to not look at Deac.

"I agree with Emma," Deac says, but she can tell from the undertone in his voice that he's pissed.

Marcus rolls his eyes. "Of course you do."

"No…" Katie objects, drying her face with a towel. She bought it herself, Emma remembers, like the rest of her toiletries. It's pink. "Dean looked…I don't know. I don't think we should interrupt."

"She's right." Emma can tell from the way Marcus shifts sideways, he'd forgotten Joe was there; Joe's often silent, furtive. Emma never forgets. Never loses track of any of the people in the room. "I saw Dean's face. Whatever it is Sam said…" He shivers.

"Well this is some bullshit," Peter—whose nose never did set straight—sneers. "I've got better things to do than wait around."

"Oh yeah?" Hari purrs. She's never liked Peter and Emma considers moving into range between the two of them, ready to come in on Hari's side. Not, she reflects, that Hari needs any help from her. And she sure as shit wouldn't thank Emma for it. Emma's just been sort of itching for an opportunity to re-break Peter's nose for him, ever since he called Sam—and by extension, Dean—a faggot. Wuss won't even play football with her. "What hot date do you have, _orphan_?"

Katie gasps and Marcus rumbles an uneasy, "Hey…let's not go calling names here…" Emma just feels a savage spike of satisfaction. He's not one of Them, one of theirs. And the sooner he gets that and gets gone, the happier she'll be.

"What the hell are you guys doing?" Mike's voice cuts across the room and they sort of spread out in this random pattern of diffused guilt. Old, sullen habits. "Where's Dean?"

"Outside," Laurie volunteers in her soft little-girl voice and never mind that she's the most bloodthirsty of the Marshall siblings as well as the shiest. "With Sam."

"Oh, what the blue Christ is it now?" Mike mutters and while everyone's attention is on him, Emma is very conscious of Deac sliding up behind her and bending a little to whisper in her ear:

"What did you do, Emma?"

If it was anyone but Deac, her immediate response would be, "Why do you automatically assume it was me?" but the benefits of their closeness are also the liabilities. Deac isn't assuming it was her, not really. Deac _knows_. So what she mutters back in the same unvoiced murmur is, "What I had to."

And really? No matter how this all plays out, that's totally the truth.

Deac's fingers brush down her arm, tickling, feathery and she struggles not to shiver.

Because Deac? He's everything. And she'll take on Sam, Dean or any other fucker that tries to take him from her.

***

There's a clatter and a commotion out back; Sam recognizes Katie's high, wavering giggle as well as the odd syllabic catches in Hari's voice and Marcus's deep rumble that carries through walls and floors alike. Guess the class disbanded itself.

The thought's not really a concern to him. Not with Dean distant and remote next to him, turning his ring around and around on his finger and that disquieting distance still between them.

 _Come back, Dean,_ he wants to say, but his adrenaline rush is wearing off and what's coming back is the same sense of cold panic he'd felt when Emma had said: "I know why you did it. Why you hide it. I get that. He's your brother."

He wants to wrap himself around Dean and shield him from this, whatever _this_ is—and of all the things Sam was prepared to teach someone, How to Get Away With Fucking Your Brother 101 _never_ crossed his mind—he wants to grab on and not let go…because that's how he deals with things.

But one of the Great Cosmic Ironies in the ongoing story of Sam and Dean is that Dean is just his opposite. The more Sam wants to hold him, hold on, the more Dean will push him away, doggedly determined to stand on his own or not at all. And so Sam can only sit and wait, anxious and afraid, watching Dean while his own thoughts scamper like mice on wheels.

_Chelsea, Chance, the school, Emma, EmmaDeacon, DeanDeanDean, fix it, gotta fix it, how?_

They'd known they were taking a risk. From the first moment Sam had said _I want you_ and Dean said _yes_ , everything has been a juggling act of lies and brazen daring. Because that's what they do. What Winchesters do. You put that smile on and you dance all the way across that thin ice.

Because every day he or Dean could have died an ugly, painful death and the risk of being exposed seemed insignificant next to the joy of having Dean. Having this. Neither one of them really expected to live this long, to ever have something worth losing greater than the loss of each other. And the truth remains—for as much as he loves their life, loves Chelsea and Mike and the kids, their big, drafty house and even Chance—he'll chuck it all for Dean. In a heartbeat. But that doesn't mean it won't leave another scar. One that will affect every moment of their future together. One that might cripple Dean forever, instead of just leaving him banged up and bent.

He starts to say _We'll be okay_ , even though he's not sure he believes it himself. Gets as far as "We—" when the front and screen doors open and Mike steps out onto the porch, looking as nervous as if he expects Sam to pull a knife on him. And Sam shuts up because for all the shit Mike's been through with them, he's still not Sam and he's not Dean and some things don't go any further than that.

"What's going on, guys?" Mike asks in that careful-cheerful voice he uses when he's in over his head and he knows it.

Sam glances at Dean—who doesn't move—and then scrambles to his feet. "It's nothing," he lies, projecting his bestest, brightest, most puppy-like Sammy like a fairy glamour. "Just some bad news. Nothing big. I think Dean just needs a minute." He grabs Mike's arm and steers him back inside. "What'd you do with the kids?"

Mike—who's probably Dean's closest friend after Sam—doesn't look at Sam until they're inside and Dean's obscured from view. "Oh," he says, stammering as he tries to pull his brain back together. "The gutters are starting to back up from crap falling off the trees and last year's dead leaves. I sent them to muck them out." Mike's smile is satisfied but all too brief as he glances again toward the front porch. His voice lowers. "He gonna be okay?"

"Yeah." Sam injects all the hearty confidence he can into the word and claps Mike on the shoulder. "Just kind of a shock, you know? He'll be fine. You know Dean."

Mike snorts, though the worry doesn't really fade from his expression. For all his smartassery, he's never had much of a poker face. "Yeah," he answers slowly. "I know Dean."

***

In the books, there's always this air of "oh, we didn't _know_ what we were doing! It was purely accidental!" Which is just bullshit as far as Emma's concerned. I mean, what kind of fucktard do you have to be to not realize that _that_ is your brother's dick and in a sane world, it's really got no business anywhere near your cunt?

On the other hand, Emma figures she and Deac left the sane world a long time ago.

Sometimes, she wonders if she and Deacon weren't headed for this from the beginning, fucked up to a core that just never got exposed until everything else was ripped away, because it sure didn't take them long. Only until the funeral, for fuck's sake.

So many maybes. If their family hadn't died—been butchered. If they'd only been home when they were supposed to. If they hadn't been put in the group home and isolated from each other with their grief so new, so raw. Not that it's any less raw now. So maybe it would have happened anyway. Maybe they were too close, even for twins. Maybe.

She remembers it hitting her in the funeral home, all at once. She remembers buckling in half in the chair. Not crying, exactly, but just doubled over and fucked up and jagged with the sight of that neat row of four coffins. She remembers the chaperone—Ms. Tilly, reeking of drugstore perfume and sweat—leaning over and asking in a stage whisper "Are you all right, dear?" and she remembers Deacon taking her hands and pulling her up, saying in a brusque, angry tone, "I've got her."

She remembers Deacon steering her out of the room and one of the attendants ushering them into another room, smaller, darker. _Somewhere to hide our grief_ , she thinks and suddenly the deep pit of her sorrow froths over an incandescent rage that frightens her at the same time it sustains her. How dare they? How dare they hide her away, hide their pain, hide _them_ away like a poorly kept secret? They were stolen from, they were _robbed_ , and not only are they not going to do anything about it, they're going to take them—the only ones left—and lock them up (away) so that no one need be reminded. They are somehow supposed to be _shamed_ by their grief, by their loss.

"No," she says and it comes out weak and afraid, making her even angrier. "No," she says a second time, stronger and with an edge like a flake of broken glass. Deacon's arms go around her and she hits his chest, her fist bouncing off his clavicle. "No, Deac, it's not…it's not…"

"Shh," Deac says, kissing her forehead, her temple, her eyelid. Then he's kissing her mouth and she's kissing him back and her hands aren't striking anymore, they're locked in the lapels of his suit—his only suit, bought for Easter—and his are on her zipper.

And they don't talk about it; there's no negotiation, no moment of hesitation. So sometimes, yeah, Emma thinks it really was inevitable.

But as soon as she thinks it, she pushes the thought away. Because if it _was_ inevitable, if it was somehow fated to be, then that means her family had to die for her to find Deacon.

And that…that's too cruel a world for her to even contemplate, jaded as she is.

***

Deacon doesn't say anything. But when has he ever _had_ to say anything to her?

This sense of shame, so unwelcome, makes her surly as she plunges her arms up to the elbow in the accumulated filth of the gutter. She wants to fling it at Peter, who's lounging at his leisure, smoking a cigarette. Asshat.

It's not like she's really going to _tell_ anyone. It's funny; by and large Emma doesn't believe in empty threats. No point to them. But this one is purely full of storm cloud and ash, because if Sam and Dean decide not to help her and Deac, if they decide to hurt—crush—them, she knows there's not really a damn thing she can or will do about it. Because she was telling the truth when she told Sam they're the same.

When she thinks of…of almost twenty _years_ of her and Deacon, still together, still facing down everything and one that looks at them crossways, she feels some forever buzzing part of herself grow still and quiet.

The first day, the very first day that they showed up and asked—begged—to be taken in, Dean had sat them down and said, "It shouldn't be like this. It shouldn't. But it is. And that's what you have to deal with."

And like everything he and Sam have tried to hammer into their heads, there are layers to it that she keeps stumbling across when she least expects. "Deac," she says and her voice comes out weak and quavering and she can't make it _stop_ , but that's all she has to say, because he slithers across the roof to her so she can put her head on his shoulder and her arms around him. He doesn't even say anything about the nastiness on her hands, even though he's careful not to touch her with his.

But no. Wait. There's some other stuff she has to say. "We'll be okay," she tells him. "I'll make it okay."

"I know," he says, soft as the wind that comes down over the hills. "We're always okay, Em. I just…I don't want to leave, you know? I like being here. I like Sam and Dean."

"Me too." Her eyes squinch shut against his shoulder. Her breath is ragged and wet. "I'll make it okay. I'll fix it," she promises. Deac knows. He knows she always keeps her promises.

"If anyone can, it's you."

She sniffles, gluey and irritating. Takes a breath. Then she raises her head and says, "I love you, Deac. I love you so much."

Deacon smiles.

***

Dean sits out there all day.

Sam has classes of his own to run and Dean's to cover; he can't hover, not that Dean would let him anyway. They barely exist; it's not like there's a _staff_ for this sort of thing. They can't just requisition a sub from the local school board. But every chance he gets, he wanders past those front windows and sees Dean sitting there, looking down at his hands and not moving.

He thinks that's the part that bothers him the most, the not moving. Dean doesn't stay still very well, always tapping, bouncing, shucking, jiving. He's as restive as the kid he never got to be and to see him just _sit_ for hours on end, when his ass has to have gone numb and his leg has to ache like a hellhound's been chewing on it… That same sense of helplessness overtakes Sam, ugly and burning and taut in his throat so that he talks all day in this pinched, rasping tone he hardly recognizes.

But this is what Dean does. What he's always done. Sam spent the first half of his life convinced Dean was absolutely invincible with a hide that combined rubber and steel and mostly he still thinks it's true. But sometimes—rarely enough to remain unnerving as the first—even Dean gets overwhelmed and then he withdraws and goes silent and there just isn't shit you can do about it except _be there_ and wait him out.

At lunch, Sam takes out a plate of two sandwiches and two Vicodin with chips and a glass of lemonade; by dinnertime, they're still untouched. The kids are all wigged out and by nightfall, everyone's talking in whispers except Mike, who's just contrary that way. Sam doesn't know if he's ever been quite so grateful for Mike, though, because honestly he just doesn't have it in him to deal with the kids just now. And Mike knows that, putting a plate in Sam's hands, shoving him away from the dinner table and towards the stairs.

"You know he'll come up when he's good and goddamn ready and not a second before," Mike observes, leaning his elbow on the finial.

"Yeah." Sam looks down at the plate without really seeing anything. "I just…"

"Sam." Sam looks up and Mikes holding up his hands. "What, are we girlfriends now?" It's such a _Dean_ sentiment it makes Sam smile and something in his chest opens long enough for him to take one unrestricted breath. "C'mon. You know Dean. He'll be fine. He's always fine, even if it takes him a while to get there. He's too damn dumb to quit."

Sam's smile widens. "I know." And if he weren't a breath and a skip from having his secrets exposed and his life taken away from him, that would be enough. But it's not that he thinks Dean's giving up. Dean doesn't do that, not dumb so much as blind pigheadedness and solid Winchester. It's that something—someone—hurt Dean and as usual, Sam can't do a damn thing about it. A part of him naively hoped they were past the 'hurt Dean' stage when they sort-of retired. But he supposes that's just foolish. Life takes every opportunity to kick you in the balls no matter where you are or what you're doing and he needs to stop forgetting that. Another breath. "Thanks, Mike."

Mike nods.

"You know only one of you is allowed to freak out at a time!" he calls as Sam turns to go the rest of the way upstairs. Sam waves one hand in careless acknowledgment and waits until he's all the way around the stairs' turn before he lets the smile fall off his face like a breaking dish.

***

For a while, Emma thought that was it. A one time thing. An act of desperation and grief and the fact that it had felt like the most right thing ever didn't change how fundamentally wrong, screwed-up and bad it was.

Then Dr. Cavanaugh… Dr. Cavanaugh.

She knows what she looks like to them. To men. A ghost, a spirit girl, and not a real one at all. Thin. Pretty. Weak. As if anything pretty can't also be durable. She's durable. She endures. Not passively. Her endurance is like the endurance of volcanos, of tectonic shift.

She doesn't even know how Deac knew to be there, other than he _always_ knows.

She only remembers the blood, the bust in her hands and the blood. Deac took the bust from her, finished it, and then came back, his arms around her while she cried. He said, over and over, "No. No one. No one but me, Em. Never again. Never anybody but me," and she nodded her head _yes_ until the men came and dragged them apart. Deacon still has the scar on his forearm, from her nails where they tore her away.

It took them six months of supervised calls in separate facilities to work it out, talking in what Becks used to call 'twin code'. Emma's anger has reshaped her—smoothed her into sleek angles that nothing catches on and then put a cutting edge on them.

A soft girl, a weak girl doesn't survive in detention, even if she keeps walking and talking, and Emma's a survivor. Not so much because she wants to be, but because that's what she was branded the moment their family died. She and Deacon are the survivors and to be less than that would be the same as killing them herself. So she survives. And she feels herself getting hard and sharp, always with that anger. That _rage_.

And she likes it. Softness almost killed her. There's no room left in her for softness. Maybe if she hadn't been so soft they wouldn't have split her and Deacon apart at all. But she worries. Six months…maybe Deacon won't like the girl she's become. Maybe the Emma he loves is the Emma she was before.

She's not afraid, breaking out of the facility. But she is afraid, seeing him again.

Afraid until the first touch of his hand, threading through her hair. Until the first feather-light brushes of his mouth over her temple, her cheeks, her mouth. "Deac—" she says, even as she's clinging to him.

"It's okay, Em," he answers, backing her into the wall and God, she _missed_ him. More than missed him; she's been insane without him, a cloudy red veil that she can only now see the edges of, to be able to lift from her eyes. "I know."

"You don't," she protests, shaking her head even as she spreads her legs and climbs him like a tree. He holds her up like it's nothing. He's hard against her and she thinks she might turn to liquid with relief.

"I do," he says and there's no uncertainty in his voice. "You're me. We're each other. We're each other's."

"Always," she whispers, leaning her forehead against his.

"Yes."

***

"Are you going to sit up there and watch me all night?" Dean's voice drifts up, startling her. He sounds rough and gravelly.

She's startled that he sensed her up here, but she replies steadily enough, "That depends. You planning on sitting out here all night?"

He chuckles and she climbs down from the roof to stand in front of him. She's glad it's dark, heat blushing through her face so hard it feels like it should glow. "I'm sorry," she says, mostly a mumble.

"Hmmm." Dean says.

"I won't tell anyone." She tears at a hangnail on her thumb. "I was never going to tell anybody. I just…" She swallows. "Deacon's all I have."

"And so that gives you the right to go tearing through mine and Sam's past, huh? Ripping up all the shit we tried to put behind us? That gives you the right to threaten Sam—threaten _us_ —unless we help you get what you want? Like we haven't been doing that the whole time since you showed up on _our_ doorstep?"

He sounds angry. Of course he is.

"We all want to be what you are," she answers, sounding pretty pissed herself. "Where you are. Why should it surprise you that some of us want it more than others? He's my brother. My twin. Wouldn't you do anything for your brother?" Careful. She has to show him—that she can be as careful as him and Sam.

"You don't know a damn thing about it," Dean growls.

Her chin comes up and she feels like fire might spark out of her eyes, but she doesn't say anything, her breath steaming slightly in the damp and cold. She wants to punch him, but she doesn't fool herself by even thinking she'd connect. Besides, she promised Deac she'd fix this. She doesn't back down on her promises. "What are you going to do?" she asks instead.

"Now?" Dean asks. He reaches out and she falls back a step without meaning to. His smile is a flash of silver white as he grabs the railing and hauls himself upright. "I'm going to bed. Tomorrow?" He pauses. "I don't know yet. Guess we'll have to all figure that out." He turns slowly and painfully, clearly favoring his bad leg. She wonders what happened to his cane. He looks back at her and holds out his arm. "Want to help an old man up the stairs?"

Her throat and eyes flood. Just fill the fuck up. She can't say anything. She just comes forward and puts her shoulder under his.

***

Upstairs, Sam sits blankly in front of the TV for an hour before he realizes he hasn't touched his dinner and that the newspaper, his soda bottle, and the remote control are all levitating, rotating in small, tight circles.

Carefully, he takes control and sets them down. His head's throbbing. He rakes a hand through his hair and gets up. The plate he wraps in tinfoil and puts in their kitchenette's fridge. Then he gets out the dry cleanser, wet cleanser, bleach, sponges, rags, broom, mop and bucket.

Dean laughs at him when Sam gets like this. Used to be worse when they were younger, when it was the latest in their string of motel rooms. Now Dean seems to be happy enough to let Sam do his thing. Or…well, grumble and bitch a lot and complain that he can't find anything because it's fucking _put away_ (gasp!); but Sam would give a lot at this moment to have Dean sitting in his chair whinging about how he can't hear the TV over the vacuum and he's damn near crippled, Sam can fucking well clean around him.

Hands full, Sam resolutely ignores the way the mop, broom and bucket dance their merry way behind him like he's the saddest Sorcerer's Apprentice ever.

***

_Epilogue_.

"Sam?"

Dean can smell the cleanser from the other side of the door. He resigns himself to days of being unable to find his papers or his favorite flannel shirt and using coasters on the tables in the living room. The smell is worse inside the apartment; he fights the urge to sneeze at the combination of bleach and more arcane cleaning fluids.

Sam doesn't answer. The place is spotless. Even the doorknobs look polished. Using the furniture as a crutch as he hobble-hops his way across the apartment, he has no doubt Sam's going to say something about his fingerprint smudges tomorrow.

Sam's lying on the bed. Just…lying there, not sleeping, his eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. There's no expression on his face. Might as well be nobody home. It hurts to look at him, so bled and empty and at the same time the most important, beautiful, precious thing about his life. Whatever else happens, he can't lose Sam. All those hours of brooding, that's the one thing that's crystal clear. He just…he can't lose Sam.

Dean crawls onto the bed next to him, pushing up Sam's arm to tuck in next to his body, rest his head on Sam's shoulder. The breath goes out of Sam in a sigh and he turns, one leg sliding over Dean's hip, his hand fisting in Dean's T-shirt hard enough his nails scratch the skin underneath. Their foreheads and noses align.

 _It'll be all right,_ Dean wants to tell him. But he doesn't know that. _I love you,_ he wants to say, but he doesn't know how. How to make it sound like what he means, like the truth and not a cheap Hallmark sentiment. He hopes Sam already knows and that it's enough.

They shift and nudge in small subtle increments, fitting closer, tighter against each other until Dean isn't really sure where they each start and end. Their mouths nearly touch, sharing breath without quite kissing. Dean thinks he can feel the deep throb of Sam's heart, opposite his own but slowly, steadily synchronizing.

_You. You. You._

**Author's Note:**

> There endeth the story; here begins the rambling. As ever *handwaves* read or not at your leisure.
> 
> This actually has an almost unbelievably complicated history of predecessors; more than my usual Heart 'verse stories. The story itself follows immediately after Mirror Images, but also touches on an OC Joe, who was created by someone else, and the character Peter was introduced in a drabble I chose not to migrate over, and then the ending was once a double drabble, At the End of All Things, which was always intended to be part of whatever "reaction" story I wrote. 
> 
> The other thing that sort of tickled me about this story was the format in which it came out. I found myself thinking of it almost as a poetical refrain: AAB AAB AABC, or Emma Emma Sam, Emma Emma Sam, Emma Emma Sam, Dean. I was originally going to have it as Emma Emma Sam, Emma Emma Dean, but when it came time to write his POV, I found myself pushed gently but with finality out of his head. 
> 
> In some sense, that's the crux of this event for Dean; not so much the threat of exposure as the interference in a situation he regards as fundamentally and utterly private. The unspoken covenant of all the people who come to the school is one of silence and respect. They've all been traumatized in a very violent fashion, they've all lost those who were closest to them and the LAST thing most of them want to do is talk about it. And so they don't. And they don't ask. And they don't rummage around in each other's private life. So beyond the threat of being exposed, the breach Emma is most guilty of is the breach of trust, which Dean doesn't give easily or swiftly. And Emma knows this.
> 
> Another thing that struck me in the writing of this was that Dean is actually having a great deal of difficulty with the incest. Which…seems ironic in one fashion and completely appropriate in others. Firstly, he sees Emma and Deacon as kids. And while in this 'verse, he and Sam started somewhat around this same age, he'd be the first to NOT recommend his lifestyle to anyone else, just as I know what kind of crazy dangerous stupid sex life I had going on in my youth that I'd be sort of scandalized to hear someone else that age engaging in. It's clearly a case of 'do as I say and not as I do' to him. Then too, he's—consciously or unconsciously—drawing that same line between m/m incest—which has no possibility of pregnancy or inbreeding—and m/f. And lastly, Emma and Deacon are twins. Which excuses them in some ways on the sun hand (to him) and makes it more appalling on the moon hand. Sam and Dean have been, on some level, been able to make this work because they don't look alike enough for people to automatically connect them as brothers (or as said in Mirror Images, you see what you want to see); that same trick will not work for twins…which is another story. *sighs*
> 
> And yet still, this 'verse is my Happy Place.


End file.
